peace at last

I'm reluctant to admit it, but it seems that Charlotte can survive without a nap.  I was becoming less and less successful at getting her to lay still and close her eyes long enough to fall asleep.  We were both miserable, and poor Maggie wasn't getting a decent nap because all the ruckus woke her almost every day.  So, I gave in and tried a few days sans nap.  We survived, and Charlotte wasn't a sourpuss like I thought she'd be.  Instead of sleeping, Charlotte spends an hour or so doing something quiet.  We read together awhile, then she plays while I do some housework or read something for myself.  We're working our way through the Disney princess movies, too, and our play time has been centered on reenacting princess stories.  Sometimes, Charlotte likes to be the princess.  Sometimes, she's the prince or the villain or the mother or the father.  Anyhow, without a nap, the God-awful threes are a whole lot easier to deal with.  She still fights me on everything, and seems to need a threat of some sort before she'll cooperate ("If you don't go potty now, we won't go to the playground at all.").  She demands that I count before she'll do what I ask of her, which I really hate because my parents used to do that to me... often without the request, skipping directly to the "1.. 2... 3!"  We're getting along a lot better though.  It's been more than a week since she last told me, "Mommy, I love you, but I don't like you very much."

And some days, she does take a nap...

 

 

Then there's Maggie.  She is the most laid-back, easy-going child I could imagine.  She asks to nap when she's tired, and if no one pays attention, she just falls asleep wherever she happens to be.





Maggie is speaking more and more words every day.  She tests them out, then once she can say something well enough to be consistently understood, she just keeps repeating it over and over and over again.  Today's word was "sleep," which comes out as "seep."  When I told her it was time to get ready for bed, she essentially sang it to me the entire time I was changing her diaper and putting her jammies on her.  She likes to "argue" with me, repeating "no, no, no" to which I reply, "Yes, yes, yes."  Charlotte has started telling knock-knock jokes, so Maggie likes to yell, "Knock, knock!" while pantomiming knocking on a door.  Both the arguing and the knocking make her laugh.  Maggie has started running, which makes her extraordinarily happy.  She wants to jump, too, but hasn't yet figured out how.

Summer paid us a visit, then disappeared again but left us with an itch that can only be scratched with trips to the beach.  I plan to introduce Charlotte to backyard camping the next weekend without rain; full-blown away-from-home camping is on the agenda later this summer.  The girls and I will be vacationing with my parents at a house they rented on a lake later this month, then I'll have my knee tune-up a couple of weeks later. Summer is filling up already.